A Dáil by-election was held in the constituency of Dublin Bay South in Ireland on Thursday, 8 July 2021, to fill a vacancy in the 33rd Dáil. It followed the resignation of Fine Gael Teachta Dála (TD) Eoghan Murphy. The by-election was won by Senator Ivana Bacik of the Labour Party.
Bacik was able to overcome low poll numbers nationally for the Labour Party as well as defy attempts by Fine Gael and Sinn Féin to define the by-election as an ideological showdown solely between the two of them. In stark contrast to Labour's success, the by-election was also noted for the disastrous result suffered by Fianna Fáil, with a number of publications declaring it the single worst election result in the party's tenured history.
Fifteen candidates were nominated, ten from political parties and five independents. The electorate was 72,302.
The polls closed at 22:30 on Thursday 8 July. The Irish Times predicted that the final turnout figure would be no more than 40%, and contrasted that with the 52% turnout in Dublin Bay South at the last general election. The count showed a turnout of 34.7%, which was higher than some predictions, and exceeded the 26% turnout at both the Dublin Fingal and Dublin Mid-West by-elections in 2019.
Background Eoghan Murphy was elected as a TD for Dublin South-East in the 2011 general election, a constituency covering most of what became the Dublin Bay South constituency in 2016. Murphy retained his seat at both the 2016 and 2020 general elections. Murphy served as Minister of State at the Department of Finance from 2016 to 2017.
A close ally of Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar, he was a key figure in Varadkar's successful leadership campaign in 2017. When Varadkar became Taoiseach in June 2017, Murphy was appointed to the cabinet as the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government. After the February 2020 Irish general election, prolonged negotiations led to the formation in June 2020 of a three-party coalition government, to which Murphy was not appointed.
On 27 April 2021 Murphy resigned his seat to pursue a career in international affairs. The Electoral (Amendment) Act 2011 stipulates that a by-election in Ireland must be held within six months of a vacancy occurring. The writ was moved in the Dáil on 16 June 2021, and on the same day the polling order for the by-election was signed by Murphy's successor as Housing Minister, Darragh O'Brien. The order set the polling date as 8 July 2021.
Constituency profile Dublin Bay South has been characterised as a "Fine Gael heartland" by some of the Irish national media, noting the area (as Dublin South-East) had been the seat of Fine Gael leaders John A. Costello and Garret FitzGerald and their historical performance in the area. However, it had also been the seat of party leaders Ruairi Quinn of the Labour Party, Michael McDowell of the Progressive Democrats, John Gormley of the Green Party and Eamon Ryan, former leader of the Green Party.
Dublin Bay South has been called "one of the most liberal constituencies in the country" as well as "one of the wealthiest". It had the highest vote in the 2018 referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibited abortion, and its main predecessor constituency Dublin South-East had the highest vote in favour of marriage equality in the 2015 referendum with 74.0% voting 'Yes'. It has been noted that between the Labour Party, the Green Party, the Social Democrats and Democratic Left, centre-left parties have won at least 29% of the vote in every election in the area between 1981 and 2021.
At the 2020 general election, Dublin Bay South was one of twelve constituencies (of a total of 39) which elected no women. Nine of the by-election candidates were women.
Half of adults in the constituency have been described as professionals, 57% of individuals have third-level qualifications, and 44% live in privately rented apartments.
Procedure
Every Irish and British citizen on the register of electors in the Dublin Bay South constituency could vote, with the electorate being 72,302. The election was held using single transferable vote, with the candidate elected when they either had the highest number of votes after all other candidates had been eliminated, or upon reaching the quota of over half the total valid votes.
The by-election was the first election to the Dáil since the COVID-19 pandemic began. It was conducted in accordance with COVID-19 public health advice, with extended polling hours of 07:00 IST and 22:30 IST on Thursday 8 July. Measures included having hand sanitisers at all polling stations, voters being asked to wear a mask and observe social distancing when voting, and each presiding officers' desk having a perspex screen. Voters were also asked to bring their own pen or pencil to mark the ballot paper, with pencils which did not need to be returned also available if required.
Candidates Candidate selection On 7 May, Kate O'Connell declared she would not seek to be the Fine Gael candidate for the election. O'Connell had previously been a TD for the constituency between 2016 and 2020, but did not retain her seat in the 2020 general election, placing fifth in the four-seat constituency. O'Connell suggested she would not be able to win a party selection again due to her relationship with the Fine Gael leadership souring in the meantime.
Dublin City Councillor James Geoghegan announced his intention to seek the Fine Gael nomination on 31 April, noting that in the 2019 Dublin City Council election he had received the highest vote share of any Fine Gael candidate in Dublin. He also stressed that he had backed Leo Varadkar in the 2017 Fine Gael leadership election, whereas O'Connell had backed Varadkar's opponent Simon Coveney. Geoghegan won the support of all 12 party branches in Dublin Bay South. He was the only Fine Gael candidate to be nominated by party members as of the party deadline on 10 May, and was formally selected on 13 May.
The Lord Mayor of Dublin Hazel Chu and Dublin City Councillor Claire Byrne contested the Green Party nomination. At a selection convention on 4 June, Byrne was chosen as the party candidate.
Fianna Fáil councillors Deirdre Conroy and Claire O'Connor were reported as potential candidates for the party nomination. However, O'Connor declined to run. That left Conroy as the sole nominee as of the party deadline on 20 May, and on 25 May she was formally selected as the Fianna Fáil candidate. Conroy had been first elected as a councillor in the 2019 Dublin City Council election.
Senator Ivana Bacik was selected as the Labour Party candidate on 17 May, and Senator Lynn Boylan was selected as the Sinn Féin candidate on 4 June.
Sarah Durcan, who stood for the Social Democrats in Dublin Bay South in the 2020 general election, was the only nominee as of the party deadline and was named as the Social Democrats candidate on 2 June.
Mairéad Tóibín, a pharmacist, was selected as Aontú's candidate. She is a sister of Peadar Tóibín, the party's founder and then sole TD.
Mannix Flynn stood as an independent candidate. He said that he would be "throwing the kitchen sink" at his campaign.
On 27 May, Peter Dooley, the co-founder of the Dublin Renters' Union announced he would be running as an independent candidate. Justin Barrett was the National Party's candidate. On 11 June, Jacqui Gilbourne of Renua announced she would be running for the party. At an anti-lockdown rally on 19 June, Dolores Cahill announced that she would be running as an independent candidate.
Nominations for the by-election closed at noon on 24 June 2021. 15 candidates stood in the by-election, with ten from registered political parties, and five independents.
Campaign Aontú Mairéad Tóibín campaigned on the platform of the housing crisis. At her campaign launch on 25 June, she called for an end to the tax advantages international property investors receive, stating it is pricing families out of the market. She also called "for a full investigation into the manner in which the government mismanaged" the spread of COVID-19 among residents of nursing homes in 2020, and criticised the Irish government and opposition for "going far beyond any other EU country" to attempt to achieve zero Covid.
Fianna Fáil Deirdre Conroy, an architectural heritage consultant, campaigned to reduce pollution within the area, saying "I want to see people of all ages swimming in the bay and that means stopping pollution and getting rid of the untreated sewage". Conroy also campaigned on housing, crime, and transport, asking for "more Gardaí on the streets", providing additional funding for community policing and community groups, extending the MetroLink proposed in Dublin city, making sure "rents are affordable" and "reducing the numbers on our social housing waiting lists".
Jim O'Callaghan was selected as the Director of Elections for Deirdre Conroy's campaign.
In June 2021, Conroy's 2013 blog Diary of a Dublin Landlady was criticised, with posts referring to a Latvian tenant who was lodging in her home, in which Conroy criticised the smell of the tenant's cooking and him sending his child benefit payment back to Latvia, as well as stating she would not permit tenants to turn the heating on at night or have overnight guests. In another post, she considered renting a linen cupboard as housing to students, saying "the linen cupboard which is a perfectly nice single room, I could possibly put a student into". In response to the controversy, Conroy said "I had one bad experience with a tenant who happened to be from Latvia", and described herself as a "very inclusive person". Separately, Conroy is [when?] taking legal action over a fall during a skiing trip to Andorra in 2015.
Fine Gael James Geoghegan described himself as "liberal and progressive" and described housing among his three main campaign priorities. He stated "I want to speak for a generation stuck in a rent trap or living in their parents' homes", and said he "is not a fan of co-living", a contrast to the Fine Gael incumbent Eoghan Murphy. When asked by journalists about his own circumstances, Geoghegan added that he had a mortgage on his home with his wife. He declined to comment on whether he had drawn on "the bank of mum and dad" for it, saying "we were lucky enough to put a deposit together" for the home. He stated his two other main campaign priorities are to "make Dublin a 15-minute city", and to invest in "childcare, education, and our work environment".
Geoghegan was criticised for being a founding member of Renua, the party which had been formed by Lucinda Creighton in 2015. Creighton had been expelled from the Fine Gael parliamentary party when she voted against the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill 2013, which had permitted abortion under certain limited circumstances. Geoghegan said he disagrees with Creighton's "social views on abortion", and "I certainly don't share any of the social views that I suppose that party subsequently became associated with". He said that he voted in favour of the repeal of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution permitting the Oireachtas to legislate for abortion, and in favour of the Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution which legalised same-sex marriage.
Following an article in The Irish Times by columnist Una Mullally criticising what the author claimed was Geoghegan's privileged family background, Fine Gael requested that people focus on Geoghegan's politics. The Irish Daily Mail subsequently complained that Geoghegan was refusing to answer questions on political issues, especially Fine Gael housing policy. Similarly, two podcasts covering Irish politics, The Echo Chamber Podcast and Una & Andrea's United Ireland podcast, complained that they had reached out to Geoghegan for interviews but he had refused all offers. Both podcasts had featured several other election candidates over the course of the campaign.